This blog describes Metatime in the Posthuman experience, drawn from Sir Isaac Newton's secret work on the future end of times, a tract in which he described Histories of Things to Come. His hidden papers on the occult were auctioned to two private buyers in 1936 at Sotheby's, but were not available for public research until the 1990s.

Under these conditions, members of the younger generations are making a lateral move, building different areas of economic activity and new financial institutions which by-pass the established spheres of economic authority. Can they really dodge the economic bullet?

Among these shifts, none is moving more quickly or explosively than the advent of cryptocurrency (which started in 2008). But does the very youthfulness of cryptocurrency, both in terms of how new it is, and in terms of the geeky culture around it, prevent it from being used and taken seriously? Also, there is a question of criminality, hacking and total ineptitude in this nascent financial area. This is one of several upcoming posts on the meaning and long term viability of cryptocurrency.

To start in the most improbable place, can a currency be built on an Internet meme? Yes, yes it can: Dogecoin. The founding of Dogecoin was a farce. Australia-based graphic designer/marketer Jackson Palmer tweeted a joke - he used the preexisting Doge meme to spoof Bitcoin. When the joke gained attention, he created the Dogecoin cryptocurrency (DOGE) with co-founder Billy Markus. It was introduced on 8 December 2013.

On memes, from Horselover Phat's Subliminal-Synchro-Sphere, where the blogger there reiterates Dawkins's theory that memes are a meta-linguistic operation in the brain which actually transforms the course of evolution by influencing people toward certain environments: "Examples of
memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making
pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in
the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so
memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to
brain via a process which, in the broad sense can be called imitation.
If
a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his
colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his
lectures. If the idea catches on, in can be said to propagate itself,
spreading from brain to brain. Additionally, [Susan] Blackmore says, regarding
memes that: 'the human language faculty primarily provided a
selective advantage to memes, not genes. The memes then changed the
environment where genes were selected, and so forced them to build
better and better meme spreading apparatus. In other words, the
function of language is to spread memes.'"

The Dogecoin meme, with its pidgin laughs about getting rich quickly, went viral, giving it "'the Internet density of a large star' according to Medium writer Quinn Norton." How do you pronounce 'doge'? The jury is out. Some say 'dogue' to rhyme with vogue; some say 'dough-gee' or 'doggy' (hard 'g') to refer to the dog in the meme; or some say 'dohj' with a soft 'g.' Overnight, DOGE became the little cryptocurrency that could, had none of bitcoin's shady dealings, and was all about building a value that could go To The Moon!

The examples here are of the Doge meme alone and later, as a Dogecoin meme. The latter plays to potential investors. But it also parodies the very people who support cryptos; that is,
Gen Y hipsters, people with delusions about getting rich quickly and living
the good life, anarcho-libertarians, and people who want 'cake,' which
could allude to any substance your heart desires. The Doge meme as marketing spoofs itself and its cryptocoin competition.

Can this geeky idiocy be worth something? Yes, because cryptos prove
that a currency's viability depends first and foremost on collective
belief, even before trust. The appeal is understandable, after years of economic gloom and
doom and all the talk of hopeless futures. DOGE creates a happy, dumb, cute
image that younger people want to believe in. So their monetary mascot
isn't the
Queen, or some dead president - it's a post-Postmodern meme of a
Japanese kindergarten
teacher's dog sitting on her couch. DOGE wasn't pre-planned; it was a
one-off by its creators, which perversely added to its credibility. Part
of DOGE's charm is that it aims at the Internet's universal mental age
of 12. It turns out that everyone's inner 12-year-old wants to get rich,
too. Never mind that the message it presents potentially constitutes a profound campaign of disinformation.

The video ends with the address of the video creator's DOGE wallet for tips. Video Source: Youtube.

Know Your Meme: "On February 23rd, 2010, Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato posted
several photos of her rescue-adopted Shiba Inu dog Kabosu to her
personal blog.
Among the photos included a peculiar shot of Kabosu sitting on a couch
while glaring sideways at the camera with raised eyebrows." By a fluke on the Internet, Kabosu is now an international star and financial icon. Image Source: Latin Post.

About Me

Welcome to my blog, dedicated to the aporia, anomie, mysteries, and nervous tensions of the turn of the Millennium. I'm a writer and academic, trained in the field of history. These are my histories of things that define the spirit of our times. This blog also goes beyond historians' visions of the past, and examines how metatime and time are perceived in other media and disciplines, between generations, and in high and pop culture.